Temporal Loop
by ShelleyBarnard
Summary: 26 years after Adm. Janeway destroyed the Borg, it's time to do it again. My first fanfic. Concrete advice very welcome
1. Chapter One

All characters belong to Paramount. Actually, everything interesting belongs to Paramount.

Temporal Loop

Chapter 1

Stardate 64116.4

32 years after _Voyager_'s encounter with the Caretaker

"Damn it, Kathryn! Don't do it! Just tell Starfleet Command to go to hell!"

Kathryn blinked, surprised by the force in his voice. "That's a tempting idea, but not very practical you know. It's not like I'm in the Delta Quadrant anymore. They _do_ have the ability to compel me now." Kathryn got a quizzical look in her eyes. "I don't believe that you have ever told me to do something so forcefully before. When did you get to be so blunt?"

"Just now. Nevertheless, I'm willing to bet that I have said the exact same thing whenever you happened to ask my opinion on this matter."

Kathryn smiled ruefully. "It's not in those logs, but I bet that I have asked your opinion every time. What's the use of having a friend in the Questor Group if I don't bother to pick his brain every once in a while?"

Mark gave a crooked smile that could still stir Kathryn's heart, even after all these years. "Another fantasy shattered! If I'd known that you were only interested in my mind, I never would have asked you to marry me."

How long had it been since Kathryn engaged in a little flirting? After twenty-five years, the game felt awkward, but she gave it a go anyway. "A lifetime ago, I had very little interest in your mind." Mark rewarded her efforts with another heart-breaking smile.

"You're changing the subject. I posed your question to all the members of the Questor Group—theoretically, I mean—," Mark added quickly, after noticing Kathryn's wince,"–and every one of them agreed that you should refuse to go on this mission. It is not in your best interests or in the best interests of your crew. This mission might even pose a danger to the universe as a whole, though there was no consensus on that particular question."

Kathryn was shaken by the knowledge that Mark had discussed this "theoretical exercise" with anyone else. Nevertheless, she pressed him, unwilling to sidetrack the main issue again. "So tell me what _you_ think. Do _you_ think that the universe is better served by creating a multitude of Borgless universes, or by just one time line plagued by the Borg?"

"It's not that simple, Kath. According to these logs, you have already created at least eight alternate universes. And that is not counting the times that you did not keep a log of your actions, or failed to pass logs along to a younger self, or in which you failed, or in which you did not live long enough to go back in time, or–"

"Or I simply refused to go," Kathryn interrupted him wistfully. "Any decision I make is going to alter the timeline, isn't it?"

Mark sighed, wondering how anyone as intelligent as Kathryn had ever gotten herself into this mess to begin with. She rather wondered that herself. She didn't have a log for the first time she went back in time, so she had no idea what she may have been thinking. _If_ she thinking.

Kathryn had never told anyone, not even Chakotay, that her future self was passing logs on to her younger self. She well remembered the shock of finding those logs twenty-six years ago. Lord, had it really been that long ago?

Stardate 54991.7

7 years after _Voyager_'s encounter with the Caretaker

Two days ago, the universe changed. Admiral Janeway had destroyed the Borg Queen with Icheb's neurolytic pathogen, and Captain Janeway couldn't be happier about it. Even if the Borg managed to recover from the loss of their Queen, and Kathryn had no idea whether they would or not, they certainly would not be able to rebuild the Transwarp Corridors. According to Seven, the civilization that had built the Corridors had lost the knowledge needed for their construction centuries before they were assimilated. The Borg had used the Corridors to devastating effect for decades, but never learned how to build more Corridors themselves. Even if the Borg survived, they were scattered throughout the Universe, unable to regroup for attacks or repairs. Each Cube was now isolated, and therefore vulnerable. Kathryn grinned as she thought about the thousands of civilizations that had suffered at the hands of the Borg, and who would now be able to avenge themselves upon those mechanical monsters. Most satisfying.

Kathryn wasn't a complete humanitarian, however. She was not above feeling a more personal satisfaction. _Voyager_'s crew hadn't been able to make it all the way to the Alpha Quadrant before the Corridors collapsed, but they had found a convenient exit aperture in the Beta Quadrant. They were now just eighteen months away from Earth, and four months away from a rendezvous with a Federation deep space exploration vessel. After seven years, her crew could manage that time on their heads.

All of a sudden, Kathryn grinned again as she remembered her conversation with the captain of the _Yokogawa_. Captain Arnold had claimed to be delighted that his ship was being diverted to meet her, but he couldn't quite hide his pique that the _Yokogawa_ would be passing through territory that _Voyager_ had already explored. He had gone to the Beta Quadrant in order to see things that no human had seen before and he was envious that Janeway had seen _much_ more than he had.

Arnold could keep his envy. He didn't understand how precious the familiar was. No one could possibly understand that unless they had been cut off from everything they knew for an indefinite period of time. Like say, oh, seven years. Just four more months, and then Kathryn would be in charted territory again. Most of _Voyager_'s trip had been made without the benefit of reliable star charts. Or with any charts at all, for that matter. In 120 short days, she would be in an area of space that another human being had already seen, and it felt good. It was even better to know that she was no longer alone. 

She wondered whether the _Yokogawa_ had any _real_ coffee beans on board. She would ask Arnold the next time she talked to him. 120 days until real Colombian coffee. Now _that_ was something to count down.

With a sigh, Kathryn went back to reviewing _Voyager_'s endless efficiency reports. Yes, they were close to home now, but that didn't change the fact that _Voyager_ was in a completely unfamiliar sector of the Beta Quadrant. They didn't know anything about the local politics or cultures in this part of space, so they needed to be ready for anything. Of course, with the armor plating and transphasic torpedoes that they had received from the future, she wasn't too worried. Nevertheless, it never hurt to be too careful. That was why she was reluctant to trade for fuel or supplies until she knew the neighborhood a bit better. If things were going to get tight again, then they might as well start conserving now. Which meant, of course, that she needed to wade through the damn efficiency reports. Ah well. She had managed to avoid looking at them since Admiral Janeway's arrival last week, but she couldn't put them off any longer.

Among the PADDs she expected to find, she came across sixteen that didn't belong. They were obviously highly compacted, and just as obviously, encrypted. She started to call Tuvok, to ask him how someone had managed to slip them into her desk, but stopped herself when she noticed that one of the PADDs had a note on it in plain text. It read:

"Dear Captain Janeway,

If you are reading this, then I have finally had my chance to destroy the Borg. I wonder if it was as fun as I thought it would be twenty-six years ago, when _I_ was reading from a PADD like this. I guess you will find out twenty-six years from now, when Starfleet Command sends _you_ back in time to destroy the Transwarp Corridors. (Oh, by the way, that _was_ the mission. I am the residence expert on myself, and I determined that I would only do what I was told not to do. You had to believe that it was _your_ idea to destroy the Transwarp Corridors if you were going to put in your best effort. Sorry to manipulate you like that, but that actually is what we do best.) 

You know that you will have to go back, don't you? We have brilliantly managed to place ourselves – and _Voyager _– in a temporal loop. Some me, in some alternate universe, decided to destroy the Borg with technology from the future. Starfleet Command likes the fact that the Borg are no longer able to traverse the Corridors to the Alpha Quadrant (hell, who doesn't?), so now they keep sending me back to do it over and over again. I know that I have gone back at least seven times before this turn, but Mark thinks it is probably more than that. Much more. 

The problem is, I never seem to do it exactly the same way. No matter what I, Admiral Janeway, say or do to convince you to destroy the Transwarp Corridors, the decisions about _how_ to do it always belongs to you, Captain Janeway. And since you never seem to do it the same way twice, a new timeline is created every time I go back. This means that I have created an unknown number of alternate universes, and that each one is putting stress upon the space-time continuum. You will see for yourself what I mean when you read these the PADDs that I have left for you. 

These PADDs contain logs, both ship's and personal, for the twenty-six years that have passed since I was you. Seven of us have carried these logs forward (or backward, rather) and given them to an earlier version of herself, and now I am giving those logs to you, along with my own. (I strongly urge you to keep these logs to yourself, because Starfleet Command would probably court-martial you if they knew you had them. Court-martial you, confiscate the logs, and then send you back anyway. Lord, I loathe them!) As you will see, each future is roughly the same for the universe as a whole, but is vastly different for the members of _Voyager_'s crew. It all depends on which exit aperture you took. 

Oh, I know. You have no intention of reading these logs. Don't want to affect the future. The Temporal Prime Directive, and all that bullshit. It's all very Starfleet, and I know that you even believe it at this point in your life, but you can't kid yourself (that means me) forever. Eventually, you will read them and you will act upon them. You will try to circumvent the writing in the logs to make the universe a better place for your crew, and thus create a brand-new alternate universe. God, this all gives me such a headache! Still, in order to give you some piece of mind, I have encrypted the logs. Now you won't be tempted to look at them until you really need an answer to some specific question. Since I came up with the encryption code, I have complete confidence that you can crack it when you are _really_ ready to put your mind to it. Besides, I have cracked it before.

One final note: I lied when I said it was good to get to know the younger version of me again. I suspect that I always lie about that. You are unbearably self-righteous, a total control freak and a complete pain in the ass. I remember how much I hated meeting the older version of me when I was your age, but believe it or not, I hated meeting the young me even more. And maybe that is the _real_ reason that none of the Kathryn's I've encountered ever wind up happy. I hope that you are the exception. Take care of yourself, and take care of our crew. 

— Admiral Janeway


	2. Chapter Two

All characters belong to Paramount. Actually, everything interesting belongs to Paramount.

Temporal Loop

Chapter 2

Stardate 64116.4

32 years after _Voyager_'s encounter with the Caretaker

It turned out that Admiral Janeway knew Kathryn better than Captain Janeway ever did. Kathryn _did_ read the logs a few years later, when she found herself in need of answers. The possible futures she discovered staggered her. She had cried herself sick as she read them, just as desolate over the joys that she herself had missed as she was over the tragedies that had befallen those other Kathryn's. Then the implications, the _true_ implications, of being stuck in a time loop overpowered her. She stopped crying on that day, and indeed stopped connecting to the world at all. What was the use, when she would soon be doing it all over again, even if the outcome would be slightly different?

" be so sure that you are out of options. Kath? Earth to Kath; come in Kath."

Kathryn shook herself out of her reverie to find Mark grinning at her. No, not _really_ grinning. He was only pretending to wear a cheery face in order to hide the fact that he was damn worried about her. "I'm sorry, Mark. All this talk about time travel sucked me right into the past."

Mark gave her a genuine smile this time. "Quite understandable. I'm sorry to bring you back to the present, but you've got to deal with the question at hand. Do you really want to create yet another timeline, or do you want _Voyager_ to get back to the Alpha Quadrant on her own? The choice truly is yours. I know that Starfleet Command is telling you that you must go (even though they put you through hell for breaking the Temporal Prime Directive to begin with!), but they can only control your actions during this time frame. Once you are in the past, you are free to do whatever you want." 

Mark was in full lecture mode now. This made Kathryn smile. Mark's friendship alone was worth all the sacrifices she had made to get back to Earth. "The one thing all these futures have in common is that none of them are particularly joyous for you or for your friends. I believe that the stress of existing in so many alternate timelines has severely limited your capacity for happiness."

Kathryn couldn't resist interrupting at this point. "Oh, come on Mark! Only a professional philosopher would try to get away with such melodrama! You don't really believe that existential tripe, do you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. These logs show miniscule changes from reality to reality. For the most part, these changes are sufficiently small that each of these alternate universes can exist without threatening the fabric of reality. However, for the members of your crew, these realities are wildly divergent. I guess it is the difference between throwing a rock into the ocean and throwing one into a tiny pond; in a smaller venue, small changes make larger ripples.

"According to these eight sets of logs, plus the ones that _you_ have kept, over forty-five people die in one reality or another. A few people (like poor Dalby) die in multiple universes, but nobody dies in all of them. Relationships are made and broken, children are born or not born, passengers are brought back to the Alpha Quadrant or stay on their homeworld, crewmen decide to leave _Voyager_ or stay put, the list goes on and on. Every one of these changes affects your tiny community very deeply. After your return to the Alpha Quadrant, your crew remains incestuously close — and this occurs in every reality — which means that these changes continue to affect your crew throughout the rest of their lives. The little changes that have so little effect upon the universe at large are magnified disproportionately in _Voyager_'s small collective. 

"Moreover, surely you have noticed that people seem generally happier in the earlier' realities. This would suggest that people's lives slowly become more unbearable as they exist on more and more planes of reality. You haven't felt the strain as much as others because you remain a Starfleet captain or admiral in every reality you encounter." This was true. Starfleet never permitted her to resign her commission — even when her logs suggested that she had begged them to release her — because they always wanted to have an "Admiral Janeway" at their disposal. Somebody had to go back in time to defeat the Borg, and it always had to be her. "Others, however, have had more varied experiences and have become progressively more unhappy as a result.

"One individual is enough to prove my point. Let's take your first officer as an example, as he is one of the few who has nine realities with almost no points in common from one to the next. In some realities he is prosecuted for his crimes in the Maquis, and in some he is welcomed home as a freedom fighter. He has remained in Starfleet, as your first officer," (this was the only profession that he pursued in two different realities) "as a captain in his own right," (which was in fact his current incarnation) "and as a professor at the Academy. He has become an anthropology professor at a private university on Earth, and an archaeologist investigating the Beta Quadrant. He has worked on rebuilding the colony of Trebus, eventually serving as planetary magistrate. He has gone to seminary and become a spiritual counselor, and he has served out the rest of his life in jail for crimes committed while in the Maquis." That particular log had been very difficult for Kathryn to read. The thought that he might wither away and die in a prison cell had never occurred to her back in the Delta Quadrant when he was devoting his life to Starfleet and _Voyager_. 

Kathryn remembered another painful element from that log as Mark continued. "His personal life is just as diverse. He winds up married to six different women over the course of these nine realities. I still can't believe that you are that women in three of them!" Mark chuckled merrily at this image, clearly unable to picture the two of them together. 

Kathryn forced out a chuckle as well, but there was absolutely no humor in it. She would never let Mark know it, but she was desperately jealous of those other three Kathryn's. They had been married when he was an Academy professor, an archaeologist, and a jailbird. In one of those incarnations, when she and Chakotay had both taught at Starfleet Academy, they had had two children. The Janeway of that universe had described Taya and Kolopak in such incredible detail that Kathryn often dreamed of those two remarkable people that she was never going to meet. At the point that that Janeway went into the past to face the Borg, Lt. Taya Janeway was a security officer on the _Enterprise_ and Kolopak was making a galactic name for himself as an artist. (The fact that his Aunt Phoebe was a famous artist was helpful of course, but he was incredibly talented in his own right.) Although it pained her to know of children that she would never have, she still had been delighted by the sheer possibility of being with Chakotay until she considered the reality of her own universe. 

By the time she read the logs, Chakotay was deeply involved with B'Elanna (the only other non-blonde in any of his lives). After they returned home, Tom had messed up his life almost as badly as he had as a young man. He didn't wind up in jail or officially disgraced, but he had engaged in a series of reckless affairs that broke B'Elanna's heart and ended his marriage. (Oddly enough, this had not happened to any of the other Tom's from her logs. What was it about _this_ reality that had broken him? Perhaps Mark was right after all.) Kathryn was delighted that Chakotay was able to pick up the pieces of B'Elanna's shattered life and was ecstatically happy for them both until she read those damn logs. The idea that Chakotay could have been _hers_ — and in fact _had_ been hers in at least three other realities — opened up a wellspring of emotions that she had long ago assumed were dammed up forever. At least he wasn't with Seven this time around, as he apparently had been at least twice before.

__

Don't go there, Kathryn! Aloud she said, "What is your point, exactly?"

"My point is that that guy is incapable of being happy. Every log documents his progress into depression, and every log suggests that this is a significant personality change. _You_'ve told me often enough that he wasn't always this way. Could it be that he feels the strain of existing in too many divergent universes? I would suggest that somehow he, and the other crewmembers from _Voyager_, is feeling the stress of leading deviating lives. Your other friends — Tom, B'Elanna, Harry, Seven, Tuvok — all seem to be a little unhappier in each incarnation as well. Only your Doctor, who is not organic, seems unaffected."

"What do you suggest?"

"DON'T GO BACK! Let it end right here. When Starfleet tries to put you in that armored shuttle and then slingshots you into the past, tell em to go jump in a lake!"

Mark seemed so certain. This troubled Kathryn more than she wanted to admit. She tried to shake that certainty by asking, "But what about the Borg?"

Mark wasn't buying this line of reasoning at all. "So what _about_ the Borg? Maybe it was the Federation's destiny to face the Borg. Maybe it was even our fate to be destroyed by them. We'd be in good company! Even a Borgless universe isn't worth it if everyone is stuck in a temporal loop! Are any of us really living like this?"

It was tempting, really tempting, to put the welfare of her own crew first. But she slowly shook her head. She was going to go back after all, just as Starfleet Command had ordered, and just as Mark always knew that she would. Was this part of the loop, he wondered. Did she always ask his advice and then ignore it? Perhaps he should break this loop himself, and release the _Voyager_ crew from this ridiculous merry-go-round.


	3. Chapter Three

All characters belong to Paramount. Actually, everything interesting belongs to Paramount.

Temporal Loop

Chapter 3

Once she had made her decision, Kathryn became a whirlwind. She spent the next couple of months travelling all over the Alpha Quadrant, looking up everyone she cared about, and making her good-byes. She didn't know exactly what she would face on the Borg ship, but she did know that there was no way off of the cube. And she knew that the Borg queen would be good and dead when she was finished. This knowledge gave her an edge, and she found herself almost giddy with excitement, counting down the days until the encounter. It was not lost upon her that the last time she met herself, she had also spent the next few months counting the days. So, which was more desirable: coffee, or a dead Borg queen? Hmmm. That was a tough one. 

When the time finally came, it turned out to be surprising easy to say goodbye to her life. She put on her most impressive admiral's outfit (not that it was likely to impress her younger self, quite the opposite in fact. Kathryn was certain that a stuffy admiral's outfit would make Captain Janeway a little bit contemptuous of her, and more likely to assume that her thinking was flawed and therefore more likely to do the exact opposite of what Admiral Janeway told her to do. Kathryn was a little ashamed of how easy she was to manipulate, and hoped that she wasn't as transparent to others as she was to herself), and got into her armor-plated shuttle. No one noticed when she smuggled eighteen PADDs onto the shuttle — the sixteen PADDs that had come down from her previous incarnation, and the two PADDs that contained the details of her own life. Although she wasn't hiding it, the delicate music box she brought along went equally unnoticed. It was a present from Mark, and she valued it highly. She knew that Mark was completely opposed to this mission, and yet he had given her a farewell present anyway. He had always been such a kind man, and Kathryn was deeply grateful that their friendship had survived her eight and a half-year absence and his marriage to another woman.

Speak of the devil! Kathryn smiled to see Mark's name attached to an incoming message, and quickly pulled it up.

"I haven't got a lot of time, Mark. I'm due for take-off in ten minutes, but I'm awfully glad you called to say good-bye."

"Yeah, I guess this is good-bye. I'm sorrier about that than you will ever guess, but I really think that you need the freedom to pursue your own future. Thank-you for being my best friend."

And then, the shuttle blew up. Into a million billion pieces. The music box that Mark had given Kathryn had contained a tiny but powerful explosive. Not that anyone ever found the music box to confirm this, mind you. The debris pieces were far too small to analyze in that kind of detail. 

Mark Johnson spent the rest of his life in a prison. His wife, his children, his friends and colleagues from the Questor Group — none of them ever understood why he did what he did that day. The consensus was that his brilliant mind must have cracked. No one ever understood that he had murdered his best friend in order to give her a chance at a normal life. He just hoped that she would take it.

Stardate 62657.9

28 years after _Voyager_'s encounter with the Caretaker

It had been five years since _Voyager_ had made it back from the Delta Quadrant, and Kathryn was finally settling into her life. After twenty-three years of hell, they had come back to a hero's welcome. Kathryn had been made an admiral, _Voyager_ became a museum on the grounds of the Presidio, and everyone lived happily ever after. Except for those who didn't. Tuvok was completely insane, the result of a (curable, damnit!) neurological disorder, and Seven was dead. Seven's death was unbearable enough on its own, but it had been so much worse because of its effect upon her husband. Chakotay was devastated, literally destroyed, by her death. He died himself that day. For eighteen years, Kathryn's first officer had been an empty corpse sleepwalking through life. He was ill now, and Kathryn almost thought that the end would be a kindness when it came. She _almost_ thought that.

Kathryn was on a sabbatical from Starfleet right now in order to write a book about the Borg. She had encountered the Borg ten times as often as any other individual in Federation history (the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant, after all), and she had lived to tell the tale. Of _course_ Starfleet wanted to know how she had done it! So, in between her visits to Tuvok and Chakotay, she researched every thing she could about those monsters. Again and again she went through _Voyager_'s logs, for that was where most of the Federation's knowledge about the Borg was gathered.

"Son of a bitch! How could I have missed that before?" Kathryn was mesmerized by the ship's log from Stardate 54965. _Voyager_ had passed through a nebula with hundreds of wormholes and at least 47 Borg vessels. _A Transwarp hub!_ It _had_ to be! Seven years into their journey _Voyager_ had passed by a Transwarp hub! God, how different would life had been if they stuck it out in that nebula a little longer? They had had a lead, a _solid_ lead on a way home at that point and they never even knew it! Kathryn began to laugh at the bitter irony of it all. If they had gone through that hub, Tuvok would be healthy now, Seven would be alive, and Chakotay She couldn't finish that thought properly. Chakotay would be different, that was all. And they weren't the only ones who would have benefited from an early exit from the Delta Quadrant! Quickly she checked the crew manifold. Twenty-two crewmen would still be alive today if they had gone through that hub.

All of a sudden, Kathryn wasn't laughing anymore. She was howling in misery. Screaming her pain to the world, even though there was no one around at the moment to hear her. "_Damn it!_ Why didn't we try harder to get through that hub? We could have saved ourselves sixteen years of misery! If only there was some way to change things"

If only. If only. Kathryn had been involved with time travel before. She had even broken the Temporal Time Directive before. There were always ways to get around temporal difficulties, if only one knew where to look

The End.


End file.
